Kyrr Geron
by the dude person
Summary: A down-on-his-luck Mandalorian bounty hunter had been living a wealthy life on Coruscant with the credits he earned from bounty hunting... but with bounties drying up, and Clone Troopers out to kill him, things are quickly beginning to change.
1. Chapter 1: A Drunken Smile

**Well, this is my debut on FFN. ****I want to start by thanking those who take the time to read this story. **

**I've only shown a few people my writing before, so posting here is definitely a new experience for me. I think I'm a decent writer, but I'm afraid of being so blind to my own work that I cannot see its true qualities. **

**This story will be using mostly original characters, but there may occasionally be a 'cameo' appearance or two. ****Without further ado, here's Chapter 1. **

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Chapter 1: A Drunken Smile

Kyrr Geron sat down on the old bar stool farthest away from the door he had just come in through. He was a man of about 35 with short black hair who obviously hadn't shaved his face in a week or two. The clothes he wore were unassuming, and blended in well; they wouldn't make him stand out in a crowd. He could have passed for a regular at this particular bar, but it was his first time there. He was always on the move, making sure no one could get to know him too closely, or recognize him if he needed to disappear.

The smoke in the bar was so thick, he had no idea how big it really was; he couldn't see the back wall from where he was sitting. There were lights hanging down over the bar so that it was clearly visible, but it was hard to see much else. There were a few dim lamps at several tables a few yards away, but they only showed the silhouettes of bar-goers of various races through the dense fog. There was a repugnant stench in the air, mingled with a strong odor that could be likened to old urine. _What a musty hole in the wall, _he thought._ I guess it's decent by underlevel standards._

He looked around, noticing a couple Rodians standing by the bar that were so intoxicated that they were just staggering around, laughing, and talking to people that apparently got very annoyed after their encounters with the drunkards. With the tinny music blasting from low-grade speakers in the ceiling, Kyrr couldn't make out what they were saying, but judging by the dirty looks of the people they talked to, he guessed that they weren't being at all polite. One of them hobbled over to his seat at the bar as he was about to order a drink, and put his arm around his shoulder.

"Kavaa yo no moolee-rah?"

_Can I have some money?_

Kyrr was disgusted. He wanted nothing to do with the olive-green lowlife, and decided to politely refuse the Rodian's request.

"Nobata, ji hagwa yo ashka. Bolla bata ta pateesa."

_No, I don't have very much. Go back over to your friends._

The Rodian doubled over laughing, then fell over and continued to laugh on the floor. Kyrr turned back to the bar. The grey-skinned Twi'Lek bartender came over to him and spoke to him in a raspy and barely audible voice. "Pick your poison."

"I'll take a tall glass of the Arala."

The bartender walked away to get a glass.

Kyrr was fond of Arala beer. It was cheap, watery, commonplace, and had a nasty aftertaste, but for some reason he found it to be his favorite. It reminded him of when he first started drinking it, when he was in his prime. When he drank it, wherever he was, he felt like he was home.

Just as the pale Twi'Lek slid his drink down the bar to him, Kyrr felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned around. It was the Rodian again.

"Kee baatu baatu sleemo."

_You bother me slimeball._

Kyrr sighed. He didn't take his armor with him anymore, it'd get him spotted way too easily. He still carried his blaster pistol though. He was sick of this guy, and since asking him nicely didn't work, he was done being nice.

There were three flashes of red light in quick succession, and by the time the light had faded, the Rodian lay dead on the floor with a smoking hole in his chest. The other two Rodians saw what happened and burst out in laughter, which slowly faded as they sunk to the floor passing out from intoxication combined with lack of air. Everyone else in the bar was entirely nonplussed, and most never even glanced over at the incident. People of the underlevels tended to mind their own business.

Kyrr put his blaster back in its holster on his hip, turned back to the bar for the second time, and downed his beverage in a single gulp. He tossed a credit chip onto the bar and got up to leave. He looked at the fried Rodian lying there on the floor, a drunken smile still on his lips.

_What a di'kut._

He stepped over the body, walked over to the door, and stepped out into the cool night of Coruscant.

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**I hope you've enjoyed this story so far. **

**As some of you can probably tell, my writing style is influenced by Karen Traviss's Republic Commando series (although my story is very different from hers).**

**I have several more chapters of this story written already, but I'm pretty shy... so this is just me sticking my toe in the water. If anyone seems interested, I'll definitely start putting up the rest of the chapters.**

**I'd like to think this is a creative and original story, but I understand that some of those who read it might think otherwise. I started writing this a while ago, and now that I've found this site, it seems like _everyone_ is writing about Mandalorians... **

**Thanks for reading, please leave your thoughts and comments (I'm open to any constructive criticism).**

**There are now several more chapters after this one, don't forget to check them out.**


	2. Chapter 2: Slow Business

**Ok, this one's a bit longer than Chapter 1 (about 3 times longer, in fact.) Hope you enjoy it!**

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Chapter 2: Slow Business

After Kyrr Geron stepped out of the dark and smoky bar, his eyes actually had to adjust to the brighter environment of the city streets of the Coruscant underlevels. There were bright plasma signs all over the place, advertising various products. He noticed an advertisement for a type of cheap, supposedly blast-proof vest. He chuckled a bit at the irony.

_Stupid Rodian. Wouldn't have gotten his _shebs_ fried if he had spent his money on one of those vests instead of beer._

Kyrr liked beer, but not so much that he would drink enough of it to dull his mind or his senses significantly. If he let his guard slip, he could be in serious trouble. And he didn't need any more trouble, especially not now.

He started the long walk back to his parked airspeeder. Most of the people in the underlevels couldn't afford an airspeeder, and the few people who could got theirs stolen and sold for parts real quick. So Kyrr had parked his in a back alley he had noticed was almost always vacant, then covered it with a pile of trash to minimize its being found. When he'd bought it he'd even gone so far as to weld all openings into the vehicle's internal parts shut, so it would require a fusion cutter to take any pieces of it away while it was parked in the lower levels. The speeder was too heavy to move without turning it on, and he had the only encrypted data-chip key. After all these precautions, he had still gone further and rusted the external airframe with some weak acid to make it look like un-salvageable scrap metal in the event that some street urchin ended up finding it and considered stealing it. He couldn't afford to lose that airspeeder; it wasn't like the old days where he could own three at a time and pay for repairs without denting his funds.

His favorite airspeeder had broken down a week ago, and he couldn't afford to have it fixed or replaced, so he had actually had to sell the pieces for scrap. He still had one other one left, but he reserved it for use in the upper levels. Even that one wasn't running very well; the Aratech repulsorlift engine now made a sort of low grinding sound when it started up.

Life for Kyrr had slowed down a lot since the new clone shocktroopers had showed up on Coruscant. He had only seen them once, their bright white armor and shiny black, T-shaped visors paying homage to the man he had heard they were cloned from. They rarely ventured into the almost lawless underlevels, but not everyone important _was _in the underlevels. The Hutt crime-lord, Jakrata, had operated a thriving bounty office remotely from the upper levels, where he had lived in luxury for quite some time. People would pay Jakrata 3,000 credits, for example, to get someone captured or 'taken care of.' The Hutt would pocket 500 credits for himself, and then he would post the bounty for 2,500 to a long list of bounty hunters. Kyrr had been on that list. Of course, he usually didn't go after bounties under 8,000 CR; bounties smaller than that weren't usually worth a Mandalorian's time. Kyrr Geron liked to think he was one of the best bounty hunters on Coruscant. He had over 120 claimed bounties to his name. He had amassed quite a nice amount of money using his combat, apprehension, and assassination skills.

All that had changed a month ago when the clone troopers had shown up on Coruscant. They first were mostly focused on protecting the senate. Then their main job was supposedly to make sure everyone on the planet was safe now that there was a war going on, but it wasn't long before they were helping the Coruscant Security Force to enforce law and order on the streets. Their first order of business had been to clean up the upper levels. There were hundreds of them, going around patrolling the districts around the senate, gradually getting farther and farther away from the Galactic City. In the process, Jakrata had been found and arrested, along with several other crimelords in the upper levels, and no one had heard from them since. Jakrata's bounty office had quickly vanished as his underlings began to fight over who would take over his criminal empire.

As a result, bounties were getting harder to find, and Kyrr had seen some bounties go from 'posted' to 'claimed' within the space of a standard hour. He had only been able to claim two bounties in the last month, and they were _much_ lower than he had been hoping for; one for a thief who had robbed a member of a small gang, for which he was paid 1,200 CR, and the other for a man who had looked at a Hutt the wrong way, which paid a measly 800 CR. And both bounties had had to be taken _alive_. Kyrr hated taking prisoners; he'd much rather have killed them and saved the trouble of listening to their constant whining. Still, it was another 2,000 credits he could live off of for the time being. But it wouldn't last for long. His savings were dwindling, and he calculated that if things didn't pick up soon, he'd be dirt poor in five standard months or so.

That was why he was planning to leave the district, or even the planet, and seek better work elsewhere.

As Kyrr was approaching the alley where he had left his speeder, he looked down and noticed the rusting, empty, red and white shell of an old astromech droid's dome that had apparently been gutted for parts. He stopped and bent down to examine it more closely.

_Well, this seems… familiar somehow._

Then he remembered; he was almost certain that he had placed that very same astromech dome on top of the pile of junk under which he had buried his airspeeder in the alley. Except he thought it had been heavier before.

He stood up and sprinted towards the alleyway as fast as he could. A few feet from it he could hear a sort of constant hissing noise, like a jet of air escaping from something. He crept slowly and cautiously around the corner, and then he saw what had been making the sound.

There was a red Nikto using a fusion cutter in the alley, illuminating everything in blue light from the cutting tool's jet of flame.

Kyrr couldn't believe it. Could the Nikto have found his airspeeder? He tried to push the thought away almost immediately, and then noticed the pile of junk strewn all over the alleyway that had previously covered his airspeeder. He couldn't recall anything else in the pile that require the use of a fusion cutter, as it was mostly a tool for cutting up larger things into smaller pieces, or making repairs. And there weren't any large things in the alley except for his four-person, closed-canopy speeder. He shouted at the form bent over the pile of scrap.

"Hey!"

The Nikto, who hadn't noticed Kyrr's approach over the loud hissing noise of the fusion cutter, deactivated his tool and looked up at Kyrr. He promptly turned to run. He could tell Kyrr was obviously angry at him for something, and he had seen the blaster on his hip. The Nikto knew better than to get in the way of an angry man with a gun.

His old instincts and habits kicking in, Kyrr pulled out his blaster and ran after him, jumping over several low piles of trash that the Nikto had apparently sorted out from the large pile on top of Kyrr's airspeeder. Kyrr fired a shot just as the Nikto turned the corner, leaving a blast mark on the grey duracrete wall where the Nikto's head had been only a split second before. Kyrr rounded the corner to find it led into another alleyway. He ran a short way into the alley and then stopped, scanning the narrow corridor for the red-skinned, horned man. When Kyrr could find no sign of him, he assumed the being he pursued had already gained considerable distance over him. He hadn't.

The Nikto had been hiding behind a stack of rusty old produce crates that workers from some diner had put in the alley long ago. Kyrr had passed him by a few feet without seeing him, and as soon as the Nikto saw an opportunity he tackled Kyrr from behind. Kyrr fell to the ground with the Nikto on his back, groping for Kyrr's pistol.

Kyrr was struggling to get out from under the heavier Nikto's weight, but he had Kyrr pinned down so well he could barely move.

Osik_, I'm really getting out of shape._

One of the Nikto's hands gripped the barrel of Kyrr's blaster, while the other grasped Kyrr's right arm, trying to separate Kyrr from his weapon so he could steal it to compensate for having to leave the scrapheap empty-handed for the day. He wasn't making any progress on loosening the gun from Kyrr's grip, but Kyrr realized that the Nikto would eventually win in the end unless Kyrr gained the advantage. He could find no way to get out from under his opponent, and was tiring quickly. Then Kyrr Geron tried a new tactic. He aimed at the Nikto's possible sense of pride and fired.

"Hey you ugly nose-less Nikkie, get off my back!"

The Nikto howled with rage and screamed back at Kyrr in a low, gravelly voice.

"How dare you! How dare you insult a Kajain'sa'Nikto! For that you will pay dearly, I have allies who will –"

The red Nikto never spoke another word. His outburst of rage made him drop his guard, and Kyrr was able to roll over and knock the Nikto against the rock-hard wall, stunning him momentarily. The Kajain'sa'Nikto was dazed enough by the force of the blow that he lost his grip on Kyrr and lay clutching his head on the ground. Then Kyrr sprang to his feet and, before the Nikto could comprehend what was going on, shot him once, twice to make absolutely sure he was dead.

Kyrr sighed in relief, wiping the sweat from his brow and rubbing the sore wrist the Nikto had grabbed in his attempt to pry the pistol from his grip. Though he had enjoyed being challenged, Kyrr was distraught that he had not been able to dispatch his adversary using his physical strength alone. He reflected on this.

_If that'd happened ten years ago, I probably wouldn't have missed him when I shot at him in the first alleyway… And he shouldn't have been able to pin me down like that._

Then, a flood of comprehension washed over him.

_I didn't need to shoot at him in the first place, I could have just let him go free. He wasn't really much of a threat. _

Kyrr suddenly remembered the Mandalorian code, the Supercommando Codex that he had learned after he had left the Death Watch, long ago. He realized that the Arala beer he drank earlier was probably kicking in now, at least slightly affecting his judgment. He had meant to drink it slowly, and stay in the bar until its intoxicating effects had worn off; despite its wateriness, it was surprisingly potent. But instead, he had been forced to leave the bar earlyto avoid giving any of its denizens too good a look at him now that he had drawn attention to himself. For the second time that night, Kyrr felt a sense of disgust.

_I'm barely any better than Viszla himself._

He usually didn't feel guilty after killing people, but this was different. He hadn't been paid for killing the Nikto or the Rodian, and he felt their deaths had been somewhat unnecessary. Trying to shake the feeling off, he told himself that he needed to get a grip and deal with it. He quickly started to return to his old self, cold, calculating, ruthless.

_I must be going soft! That must have been the beer talking. Not supposed to drink it so fast._

He searched the body of the second being he had killed that night, and found a total of 74 credits and a small assortment of spare electronics parts. He decided he would keep the parts to use them for repairs if anything broke later on.

He walked back up the second alley and into the first, going over to his airspeeder to inspect the damage. There was barely any junk left on top of it. He inspected the airframe, finding that the Nikto had scraped off most of the superficial rust and had started cutting a circle into its side that would have allowed him easy access to the engine. Luckily, he hadn't gotten halfway through cutting the circle before Kyrr had found him, and everything was in working order. He inserted his encrypted key into a small slot behind the windshield, which promptly popped open and granted him access to the cockpit. He started the engine as the windshield closed again, flying upwards and then merging into the closest skylane far above the underlevels. He set the speeder on autopilot, and leaned back in his leather-upholstered chair and relaxed as he floated toward his upper level apartment. He watched the sprawling metropolis of Coruscant go by out his window, feeling the square credit chips he had taken from the Nikto in his fingers. He realized that under normal circumstances he would have left the body undisturbed, but now he was really getting desperate for money.

_What can I say,_ he thought. _Business is slow._

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**Please don't forget to tell me what you think! Thanks for reading.**


	3. Chapter 3: A Visit

**Here's Chapter 3. Once again, thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this. Please leave your comments/reviews!**

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Chapter 3: A Visit

Kyrr Geron was a little boy again, in his old home. His father was speaking to him. He was reliving a moment from the past.

"Alright son, are you packed up for your trip?"

"Yeah, I think so. When are we coming back?"

"Just a few months from now. We're gonna have a great time, okay?"

"Where are we gonna go on this trip Dad?"

"Oh, just for a cruise in space. But it'll be lots of fun, just you and me and a few other people who are gonna help me run the ship. We'll get to spend lots of time together!"

"When are we leaving?"

"Right now, Kyrr. My boss says so. Come on now, we have to get in the airspeeder and fly to the spaceport, wouldn't want my cruise ship to leave without us!"

Kyrr felt panicked. All of a sudden he was a full-grown man, and he tried to warn his father of what would happen.

"Wait Dad, if we go the ship will crash, and you'll… you'll get hurt! And I'll never see you again!"

"I know son, but that's the way it happened. It was meant to be this way."

His father and his home faded away and all of a sudden he was falling, falling, falling helplessly into a black abyss.

Kyrr Geron opened his eyes. His vision was slightly blurred, and his cheek felt... cold. He sat up in bed and buried his head in his hands, contemplating his dream.

"_It was meant to be this way."_

He took a deep breath and looked over at the blue-glowing screen of the chronometer hanging on the wall in his dark apartment. It was still one and a half standard hours before sunrise on Coruscant. He changed into more decent clothing, strapped on his blaster-pistol, walked over to the panel on the wall next to his bed, and touched a button on it. In an instant, his entire apartment lit up with bright white light, which had no apparent source; there were few shadows.

Kyrr's apartment walls were painted a stark white, with polished durasteel flooring. Across from his bed were two doors; the one on the left lead out into the hallway of the apartment complex, while the one on the right lead into the small storage closet in which Kyrr stored his armor and equipment. The room in which he slept was around eighteen by twenty-five feet in size, and several feet away from his bed were two four-foot long windows that, at a touch of a button, could open or close their long, horizontal shutters in a split second; they could let in light from outside, or block it out entirely. The bed itself was essentially a part of the floor. It was pretty much a foot-tall rectangle made of durasteel with a stiff, black mattress on top of it without blankets or pillows.

In front of the two windows was a shiny black table, with an expensive-looking, leather-upholstered chair on either side of it. This was where Kyrr would talk to his clients in person, when the occasion called for it. He walked over to the table and wiped two fingers across its reflective surface. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, feeling the grit and studying the line that he had left in the thin film of dust. He sighed, and picked up his datapad, which he kept on the table. He switched it on and scrolled through the local bounties that had been posted recently. He found that there wasn't a single one over 900 credits, and he cursed silently to himself. While he was reading the list, two of the posted bounties actually disappeared, having already been claimed by some other bounty hunter.

_Great. Now the highest one is _600_ credits._

He sighed again and put his datapad back on the table. He turned away as if to leave his apartment, but when he got to the door he stopped.

_I didn't check the _non_-local bounties._

He went back and picked his datapad up again, and checked to see if there were any off-world bounties posted on the encrypted data-base that he was connected to. There were two. He saw that one of them was set at 9,000 credits.

_I don't have a ship anyway. Perhaps I can find a client or two in the underlevels today._

He returned to the door, and, once again, he hesitated. He heard several sets of running footsteps outside his door. Then he heard a clinking sound against his door, and then a beeping noise that continued to increase in rapidity. Kyrr's eyes opened wide. 

Realizing what was happening, he turned to his closet and opened the door. Just at that moment, there was a deafening blast and the sound of tearing metal, accompanied by a small fireball. Kyrr dove into his storage room, avoiding the explosion for the most part. He pressed a button on a panel inside, shutting the door behind him. He instinctively put on his dark red Mandalorian armor at a speed that could only be achieved through a lifetime of practice, preparing to face whatever had blown his front door down. His grey and crimson helmet tucked under one arm, he grabbed two of the many blaster rifles he owned off the rack on the wall, slinging one over his back for later use. He put on his helmet and took a Merr-Sonn Munitions V-1 thermal detonator from a high shelf with his left hand while he held the rifle in his right hand. He could hear activity on the other side of the closet door. Then he heard two muffled words that sent his heart racing. 

"Get clear!"

He backed up against the wall as far away from the door as he could get, which was unfortunately only a few feet away, and braced himself. There was another loud explosion, and his closet door ceased to exist, but Kyrr's armor absorbed the shockwave that reached him, leaving him unharmed. He edged over, activated his thermal detonator, and tossed it through the threshold. When he heard it go off, he swung around into what was left of his apartment. What he saw startled him; there was another black, T-shaped visor staring back into his own.

_That explains the Concord Dawn accent._

The clone trooper raised his blaster rifle, still a little dazed from the unexpected explosion, but Kyrr was fully alert and already had his rifle trained on the clone. He let loose a volley of rounds, most of which hit the clone trooper full in the face, burning away much of the front of his helmet and revealing a glimpse of the face of Jango Fett. He fell over, dead.

Kyrr looked around. In an instant, he saw that his grenade had taken out six of the nine clone shocktroopers in the squad, and his blaster had eliminated a seventh. There was one on either side of him. They slowly approached him, blaster rifles raised.  
One of them shouted, "Drop your weapons and surrender, now!" 

_I'm not gonna let these guys push me around so easy._

Kyrr slowly knelt down, as if placing his weapon on the floor. He put his rifle on the ground, and took his left hand off the grip. Then his back leg shot out and tripped the trooper behind him, and, lifting his rifle with one hand, he shot the one in front of him once in the knee. In a flash he had the rifle braced against his shoulder with his left hand supporting it, and he gunned down the trooper in front of him. As the trooper behind him was getting up, he slid across the floor. He came to a stop a couple of feet away, and lying on his side, using the bodies of two other dead clone troopers as cover, Kyrr let loose a spray of plasma at the last remaining shocktrooper just as the clone had taken aim and fired twice. One of the blue blaster bolts hit the durasteel flooring behind Kyrr, the other hitting one of the bodies that was in front of him. With all the clones dead, Kyrr stood up. 

Then he realized that if they were really trying to take him down, the shocktroopers could have a support squad standing by. He went back into the storage room, looking for any more usable equipment. He was able to salvage two more thermal detonators, which he hung from the right side of his belt. There was a Merr-Sonn 1126-series rocket that he could launch from his left gauntlet, and he found some extra power packs for his blasters that he could use. But the majority of his remaining weapons lay mangled and bent on the floor, collateral damage from the powerful blast that had ripped through the reinforced durasteel plating of the closet door. Fortunately, his blaster pistol had been on his hip when the heavy explosives destroyed the rest of his arsenal, and he had been mostly out of the way of its destructive power. 

He walked cautiously into the hall, checking all possible points for any more clone troopers. When he had made sure that that the hall was clear, he took one last look back at his ruined home. His mattress had been burnt away, along with the expensive leather upholstery on his chairs. His table had been knocked over and was peppered with shrapnel, and his datapad lay on the ground next to it, its screen cracked. There was a large, crater-like dent in the floor where the thermal detonator had exploded, the metal shutters on the windows were bent outward, and some had been propelled through the transparisteel windows. The nine bodies of the dead clones were strewn about the area in front of his closet, and the entire room was covered with a grey residue from all the smoke.

_Nice of them to visit. They sure do make a big mess for people who are trying to 'clean up' the upper levels. _

He walked down the hall, making his way toward the elevator.


	4. Chapter 4: On the Run

Chapter 4: On the Run

Kyrr Geron stood and waited in the elevator as it ascended the eighteen floors between the level on which his ruined home was and the top floor.

_Good thing this elevator doesn't have any windows. If there is a secondary squad somewhere nearby, I'm sure they're watching this whole building. I'd practically be a stationary target in this metal box. _

He made a mental note to avoid any windowed corridors once he got to the top floor. The building was thick enough that there was a sprawling grid of inner hallways on each floor, with only a few sunlit halls around the edges. Presently the elevator came to a stop, and a set of doors opened behind and in front of Kyrr. He walked briskly through the door in front of him and into a long hallway with many doors on either side. These doors were larger and spaced farther apart than those in the floors below; this was the top floor, where fifty or so of the building's richest tenants kept their personal airspeeders in two or four-vehicle garages.

Kyrr raced toward the garage which contained his own craft, glancing around occasionally for anyone who might see him. As he rounded the corner into the hall where he would gain access to his speeders, he came face to face with a finely-dressed human male. The man stopped in his tracks and took a step back with a startled expression on his face. Staring at the apparently faceless Mandalorian warrior in front of him, he pointed a finger at Kyrr and spoke in a frightened whisper.

"You... You're the one! The one those clones said they were looking-"

Kyrr had heard enough. He abruptly ended the man's life with a squeeze of a trigger. He didn't wait for the body to fall to the floor, he simply continued toward his destination.

_Now_ he _was a threat_, Kyrr thought as he entered a 7 digit pass code into a panel by the door. _He knew who I was, and who was looking for me._

He entered the room and stepped onto a slightly raised platform on which his two vehicles rested. As the doors closed, Kyrr pressed a button on a console on the platform, and the ceiling above it opened, revealing the dim, early morning sky. When the ceiling had finished sliding over to one side, the platform began to whirr as it slowly rose up to fill the open space above it.

Kyrr did not sit idly by waiting for this to happen. He jumped in the pristine and shiny-looking airspeeder he so often used when his business was in the upper levels of Coruscant, and attempted to get the engine started. By the time the platform was level with the building's flat rooftop, the machine had turned on with its usual grinding sound. As he gently increased the repulsorlift thrust, the vehicle levitated up to about two feet off the ground. All of a sudden there was a popping sound and thick grey smoke billowed out of the engine compartment. Then there was a high pitched buzzing noise followed by a metallic crunching sound as the airspeeder fell back to the ground. After that the buzzing stopped. Kyrr held back an angry scream of frustration

_What did those _chakaare _at Aratech do to my engine?_

He pressed a button that opened the canopy and got out, switching over to the half-rustedspeeder that still worked. It started up without a problem, and as he was about to take off, he saw a republic gunship slowly approaching the rooftop of the apartment complex. It had both of its large white doors slid back, revealing several fully armed clone troopers inside. At the far end of the building, about one hundred yards away Kyrr, the gunship hovered close to the rooftop and deployed its troops. Kyrr sat motionless, hoping to avoid immediate detection. The clones were all on the roof now, making their way closer to him. They eventually came to a stop around one landing platform, and one of the troopers bent down and seemed to be fiddling with the emergency exterior console that was designed to grant people access to their rented garages if the platform had accidentally been lowered. Kyrr counted nine clones.

_So I suppose this must be the backup squad. _

Then the shocktrooper that had been kneeling over the console stood up again, and all nine of them stood on the platform as it descended into the garage below. It was obvious to Kyrr that they meant to cut him off from any escape, but they had no idea how long ago the first squad went down, nor the exact garage in which Kyrr kept his speeders.

As soon as the squad had disappeared into the building, Kyrr looked around cautiously and noticed that the gunship was now strafing the rooftop, watching for any activity. If Kyrr did anything now, he'd be spotted, and possibly killed. It wouldn't be long now before the shocktroopers found the dead man Kyrr had shot, and then they would realize that he had already made it to the roof.

_If I move from where I am while that gunship is here, I'm toast. If I sit and wait until the clones figure it out, I get to the same outcome._

He couldn't decide what to do. Just then, over on the far side of the rooftop, a landing platform rose up with an airspeeder on it. The gunship raced over to it, and the two remaining clones from the squad approached it with blasters raised. One trooper knocked on the window of the speeder while the other stood behind him with his blaster trained on where he estimated the head of the vehicle's occupant would be.

The gunship was now strafing around the airspeeder, and as its canopy opened revealing an Ithorian at the controls, the gunship pointed exactly away from Kyrr. He took the opportunity without hesitation, gunning the throttle to full speed before he even activated the repulsorlift underneath him. Metal scraped on metal, kicking up a shower of sparks as Kyrr's craft skidded off the edge of the rooftop. It fell for a moment before the repulsorlift kicked in and he gained altitude.

The two shocktroopers turned around in time to see him drop off the edge of the building. They motioned to the gunship and it sped after Kyrr. He tried to lose the pursuing craft by flying through several narrow spaces between buildings, but the republic gunship still followed, rising far above the buildings and then lowering back down when Kyrr's speeder was out in the open. The gunship was gaining on him now, getting closer and closer as the chase progressed. Thinking fast, he took a dive and turned around a building, trying to merge quickly into a line of airspeeder traffic before the gunship pilot could see him again.

This plan worked, to some extent. However, just as Kyrr rounded the skyscraper, the gunship had fired a well-aimed green laser blast. It hit the tail end of Kyrr's speeder, damaging it significantly. He was losing fuel quickly as it evaporated into the air, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. He flew into a billow of smog from some industrial plant and hid there, disguising the smoke rising from his craft that would have otherwise gotten him easily spotted in a crowd.

He waited until his fuel tank indicator showed that it was less than a quarter full before venturing back out into the open, but was pleased to see the gunship had moved on, probably looking for the wreckage it'd never find. He quickly looked over a holographic map projected onto the transparisteel viewscreen of the canopy.

_The spaceport is my best bet._

_

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_

**Thanks very much for reading this far! It seems like a lot of people only read Chapter 1 or so, and fewer and fewer people go on to read the next chapters I have up... **

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Chapter 4. I still have another chapter or two up my sleeve, and there's more on the way... **

**Oh, and please note: when I say "shocktroopers," I am referring to Attack of the Clones -style, white clonetroopers, that would _eventually _have red markings on their armor by Revenge of the Sith. This takes place near the beginning of the war, so I thought I'd point that out to avoid any confusion.**

**Please leave your comments and reviews! **


	5. Chapter 5: A Long Overdue Vacation

Chapter 5: A Long Overdue Vacation

_Osik! C'mon, c'mon, don't give out on me now!_

Red warning lights flashed on Kyrr's face in the relative darkness created by the tinted viewports. The dashboard readout indicated that his fuel tank was completely empty.

_Just a little farther…_

He almost thought he could make it to the spaceport. Then he winced as everything suddenly became eerily quiet. The engine had finally given out.

The forward momentum continued to carry the craft through the air, although now it was nearly impossible for Kyrr to even steer it, much less land it. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes momentarily.

_Just stay calm. _

He opened his eyes again and glanced at his altimeter.

_And think fast. _

He could see the spaceport a few miles away now. Huge cargo ships were landing everywhere, and there were constantly other ships taking off and flying high into Coruscant's atmosphere, and then into space. Some were imposing gargantuan craft that slowly lifted off the ground. Smaller craft swarmed around the spaceport like insects.

A quiet, high-pitched electronic pinging sound from the nav computer indicated that the vehicle was now flying too slowly to be in his current skylane. Several drivers swerved around him, horns blaring. He was starting to sink below his lane; in addition to his smoking hull, he now stood out from the crowd even more.

_How the stang did they find me again so quickly?_

The gunship from before was back, and was rapidly approaching.

_At least they can't shoot me down in the middle of a skylane, the Republic wouldn't want any civilian casualties._

The gunship was now traveling parallel to Kyrr's speeder, troop bay doors still open. One of the troopers in the bay seemed to be nodding at his forearm plate. Then there was a blaring alarm coming from outside, and a few seconds later several Coruscant Security Force speeders raced past Kyrr in the opposite direction. They effectively cut off all traffic, first in the lane he was in, and then in the rest of the nearby lanes. His skylane was thinning out pretty quickly as the all other airspeeder's nav computers automatically redirected them. The gunship swerved in closer to him to avoid a building, and Kyrr took advantage of the opportunity.

He put his helmet on and popped the hatch. It ripped off and flew past him as he jumped out of the cockpit with his weapons strapped to his back.

He was just barely able to land his upper body in the gunship's troop bay, with his legs still dangling over the side. He deployed the saw-like blades in both of his gauntlets and started to use them to pull himself forward on his stomach. The five clones in the gunship all pulled their triggers just as the gunship swerved again, knocking them off balance and ruining their aim, sending blaster bolts flying in all directions. Kyrr grabbed the ankle of the closest trooper and dragged him clear over the edge, then finally got his legs up and stood up. One of the other clone troopers shot at him again, but missed. The trooper tried to hit him with his rifle, but Kyrr grabbed it and he met the same fate as his brother. Then a quick blow to the neck with his gauntlet blade dispatched the next trooper, and the last two, caught while still struggling to their feet in the rocking gunship, were easily shoved into the urban abyss below. Kyrr opened the door to the pilot's compartment.

"What's the problem, I thought I heard –"

The pilot's words were cut off when Kyrr severed his spinal chord. He shoved the body aside, trying to figure out how to fly a Low Altitude Assault Transport. He found the steering yoke, and tried to redirect the ship towards the spaceport. He found a nice open space between two rows of medium sized cargo vessels, and decided he'd try to make an emergency landing there. He yanked back on the throttle, but not in time before he was only inches off the ground.

_Brace for impact…_

There was a jarring metallic crunch as the gunship skidded across the permacrete, with civilians and loading droids leaping out of the way in front of him. Sparks flew everywhere, and after a few seconds the gunship started to tip over on its side, seriously mangling the right wing.

When the ship finally screeched to a halt, Kyrr wriggled out of the pilot's seat and back into the troop bay. He crawled out of the sideways wreckage, around which a few gathering onlookers stared in disbelief. He shook himself, and sprinted up the loading ramp of the nearest starship he could see. He ran right into a woman with light brown hair, dark green eyes, and a blaster on her hip.

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**Thank you very much for your continued support! ****As always, I hope you have enjoyed reading my work. I know this chapter's a little short, but it was mostly action. ****Anyway, if all goes well, there will be more chapters soon. **

**Please, if you have time to read this, you have time to tell me whether you liked it or not! Please leave a review! **


	6. Chapter 6: A Pilot with a Ship

******(THERE HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE MISTAKE! If you read Chapter 6 before May 21, 2011, you _actually _read Chapter 7. There was a mix-up, which has now been corrected. This is the correct Chapter 6.)**

**After a long hiatus, I have finally decided to update this story. I will be working on it from time to time, and will update again when I can.**

**I want to thank you very much for reading this far into it! Not many people read past Chapter 3, it seems...**

**Please leave** **me a review! If I can't tell whether people enjoy reading this story, then what's the point of sharing it with the world?**

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Chapter 6: A Pilot with a Ship

The woman's dark green eyes looked first into Kyrr Geron's t-shaped visor, then darted to the array of weapons he was carrying as she drew her blaster and tried to take aim. As she moved backward, blaster raised, she tripped over a cargo case and Kyrr kicked the blaster from her hand. She rolled over and tried to dive toward it, but Kyrr had already drawn his own sidearm. He fired once, and the shot narrowly grazed her outstretched arm, singing the black fabric of her sleeve and burning her skin. She winced and pulled her arm back.

"Don't move," he said, as he approached her, pistol trained on her. She had a look of terror on her face, but she didn't scream, nor did she try to escape. He aimed for her head. His finger tightened a little on the trigger, but he hesitated.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked softly. Kyrr took another step closer.

_No, no, you can't do this. Not this time. Don't shoot her._

"Who are you?" he asked.

"What?"

He repeated himself: "I said who are you? Is this _your_ starship?"

"Not exactly – I'm just the pilot… Does this have anything to do with my father? He doesn't care about me anymore… He'd never pay a ransom."

"Well –"

"Listen, I don't even know where he is anymore, he hasn't contacted me since –"

"Enough! Can you fly this thing or not?"

"Yes."

"Good. Close the cargo bay doors."

She stood up, clutching her injured arm, and walked over to a control panel next to the opening through which Kyrr had entered the ship. She pressed a few buttons with her good hand, and the 10-foot wide loading ramp moved upwards until it clunked into position. For a split second, it was dark, then lights came on inside the cargo bay. The bay was only about 15 feet wide by 20 feet deep, and about 15 feet tall. It was definitely only a small cargo vessel, similar in size to several passenger ship models Kyrr had seen before.

The woman turned back to Kyrr.

"What do you want from me? You weren't sent by…" she trailed off, with a confused expression on her face.

"I need to get off this planet, and you're a pilot with a ship. It's self explanatory."

"Ok," she replied.

_'Ok?' That's it? No struggle, no call for help?_

She walked past him and stopped at the doorway into the rest of the ship.

"Cockpit's this way."

Kyrr followed her, blaster pistol still out and ready in case she tried anything with him. For some reason he felt uneasy about her sudden compliance.

She sat down in one of the two pilot's chairs in the relatively small cockpit. Kyrr stood awkwardly for a moment, then took the seat beside hers. She reached toward the comm button, and Kyrr grabbed her arm. It was the arm that had been singed by Kyrr's blaster bolt. She winced.

She turned to him and said, "It's ok! I just need to get a flight clearance from the control tower!"

He quickly let go of her arm as he saw tears well up in her eyes.

"No time for that, we need to leave right now," he told her.

She took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her eyes, and composed herself again.

"But I still need to run the pre-flight checks, or else –"

"I said _now_! Didn't you see what happened out there? I'm being tailed by CSF and a bunch of clones, so if you value your life you _will_ take off immediately!"

The woman looked startled. Then she turned around and started the ship's power up sequence, quickly adjusting numerous switches and controls. Then a voice came in over the comm system.

"_Attention: All flights from Section 138 are temporarily grounded –_"

CSF sirens could be heard from outside. They were catching up with Kyrr. The voice continued.

"_- due to an incident in the area. Coruscant Security Force officials will be –_"

"_Osik_, get this thing off the ground!"

"_- dispatched to resolve the problem –"_

"I'm trying!"

The sirens were getting closer.

"_- as soon as possible. We apologize for the -" _

The engines started to whir. A drop of sweat ran down the woman's face.

_"- inconvenience. Please remain calm._"

She turned around momentarily.

"Where?"

"Anywhere, just _go_!"

There was a new transmission coming from the comm system. This time the voice was shouting.

"_By order of the Coruscant Security Force, open your cargo bay immediately!"_

The ship lifted off the ground. The woman yanked back on the steering yoke, tilting the ship upwards. It raced through the greyish clouds of Coruscant's polluted atmosphere with several CSF patrol speeders in pursuit.

"_Fierfek_, another one?"

Kyrr had noticed that another LAAT/i gunship had joined the chase. The CSF speeders were falling behind, but the gunship was starting to gain on them. Unlike the speeders, the gunship could actually follow Kyrr into space.

The CSF officer made a last desperate transmission. _"Halt! Or face charges of –"_

Kyrr switched the comm unit off. They cleared the atmosphere entirely, and the woman started flipping switches. The gunship fired a spray of green plasma. The ship shook slightly, then the woman flipped another switch. A deep humming started that got louder and higher until there was a tremendous snap.

They had made the jump to hyperspace.


	7. Chapter 7: A Business Proposition

Chapter 7: A Business Proposition

White and black streaked by in a shower of stars outside the viewport. It was silent in the cockpit except for the faint sound of labored breathing, and a barely audible, deep humming from the engines.

_I can't believe it, _Kyrr thought, _she did it… We made it._

Neither Kyrr nor the woman spoke for what seemed like an eternity. They simply sat there, quietly adjusting to the fact they had actually escaped alive; both of them were still a little shaken by the ordeal. After a while, the woman made a few adjustments to the control panel. Kyrr noticed her absent-mindedly move her left hand to the burn on her right arm, as she sat back and stared blankly at the nav computer's screen. Kyrr started to speak.

"I just wanted to say -"

The woman slowly straightened up, then swiveled her chair toward Kyrr with a look of curiosity on her face. He stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. He paused before continuing.

"I just wanted to… know if there was a medical station onboard."

"Oh," she replied. "Well, there is a med kit… It's in a storage compartment. On the wall in the hallway, just past the cockpit door."

Kyrr stood up and walked just out of the cockpit area, the door shutting promptly behind him with a quick _chunk_ sound. And sure enough, there was a grey, rectangular durasteel door, about two feet by one and a half feet, halfway up the curved wall. There was a small handle on the right side of it. He opened the recessed compartment, and found a heavy metallic case inside.

He took the case back to the cockpit with him, carrying it in one hand while the other rested on his holstered blaster. When the door into the cockpit opened again, he looked inside and was relieved to see the woman was still in the same position at the controls as she had been when he left. He sat down again cautiously, half expecting her to pull out some hidden weapon she had retrieved while he was getting the medical supplies. When he was satisfied that she wasn't going to, he set the case down next to his seat.

He opened it and found a variety of basic medical supplies. He went right for the painkillers.

_Landing that gunship really did a number on me… if you can call that a 'landing.'_

He probably had at least minor bruising over most of his body, from the fight in the alleyway the night before, the explosive blast of a clone trooper's thermal detonator that morning, and finally the crashless than two hours ago. Even with the armor, he wasn't indestructible. He was really starting to feel it, now that the adrenaline in his system was subsiding.

He slowly removed his helmet, tucking it under one arm. The woman, glancing over, almost seemed surprised to see that there was actually a human being inside it. The white plastoid jar of painkiller tablets rattled noisily as Kyrr shook a few of them out into his other hand. He tossed his head back, and popped them into his mouth. He almost felt better already.

Setting the bottle down, he rifled through the other contents of the medical case, and found a few pre-loaded bacta injections. He handed one to the woman.

"Here."

She slowly took it from him, looking a little surprised.

She said nothing as removed the protective cap from the needle and rolled back her tattered right sleeve.

The burn on the underside of her right forearm had a dark reddish area in the middle of it, maybe three inches around. The skin surrounding the actual burn had a deep pink coloration that faded away at the edges. She had been lucky that Kyrr's shot had only grazed her, and that the relatively thick fabric of her jacket had protected her somewhat from the full heat of the searing projectile.

Kyrr watched her as she stabbed the needle into area around the wound and injected the blue healing liquid into her flesh. Looking at her closely for the first time, he began to observe other details about her appearance and clothing.

The black jacket she was wearing had an almost cylindrical collar, and was open down the front, revealing a dark green tanktop underneath. She wore a black leather belt with a tarnished and scratched silver buckle, with the holster for her relatively small pistol attached to the right side of it. Her pants were a dark grey and had a pocket on each thigh, and her dull brown leather boots looked worn and distressed.

She had been gritting her teeth, and as she withdrew the empty syringe from her arm, she cried out. Kyrr silently held out the bottle of pain pills to her.

She smiled faintly, and pushed them back at Kyrr as she said, "No, thank you."

She handed him back the depleted bacta injection, and he put it back into the case of medical supplies along with the painkillers. He stood up after closing the container, and started to walk away to put it back in the storage compartment. When he got to the doorway, the woman asked him a question.

"Why do you care?"

He turned around, still holding the medical case in his arms.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean… why does it matter to you, if I'm hurt?"

Kyrr sighed, taking a moment to think. He looked away as he answered her. "Because… you might still be useful to me."

With that he walked away and put the med kit back in its cabinet. As he was closing it, he noticed his reflection in the metal of the compartment's door. It stared back at him, but it was blurry and grey, muffled by the imperfections and scratches in the metal's surface. He could barely recognize himself.

He went back to cockpit, and as he sat down again, a red light started to flash on the control panel. The woman throttled back and the streaks outside resolved themselves into a vast starfield. Kyrr looked out the window at the planet they were now slowly approaching.

"Where are we?" he asked.

The woman had a sullen look on her face as she replied.

"Tatooine."

Kyrr noted the woman's worried expression as she said the planet's name out loud. At the same time, he was relieved to hear he ended up so far away from Coruscant and the Republic itself.

"Good. Maybe I did the right thing, not killing you earlier."

She turned to him. She looked at him briefly, then turned away and looked out the viewport as if something intimidating were looming just outside the ship. Kyrr realized she must have been looking at the planet Tatooine itself. A quiet moment went by, then she spoke. "Perhaps it would've been better if you had. I may be as good as dead now anyway."

"I'm not sure I understand."

She didn't look at Kyrr, but kept her gaze fixed on the planet in the distance as she elaborated. "I work for a crimelord on Tatooine; I was supposed to deliver a large shipment of Ryll spice to one of his contacts on Coruscant. I was unloading my cargo when you showed up, and now most of it is still back at the spaceport. My boss could have me killed for losing that much… showing up on Tatooine again is a very dangerous thing to do."

"Why did you come here then? Why not go to some other sytem?"

"Because, I left the spaceport on Coruscant without a flight clearance… not to mention all the Ryll spice I left behind that the CSF will find... Besides, you're obviously wanted by the Republic, and for all they know I could be helping you willingly. There's no way I could show up on a Republic world and not get arrested the second they pick up on my ship's transponder code."

"That's not necessarily true. I'm sure the Republic doesn't have the resources to keep track of you and me across multiple planets. The Republic _is_ in the middle of a war, you know…"

"If they don't have the resources, why did they send clones after you? Law enforcement is the Coruscant Security Force's job. I don't know what you did exactly, but whatever they're sending soldiers after you for must have been serious enough to get their attention."

Kyrr realized that she might be right. He was simply a bounty hunter, he had killed a lot of people over the years – mostly the scum of the underlevels – but that shouldn't have been enough to warrant special treatment from the Republic when it was in this sort of galactic crisis. He didn't understand why he seemed to be so important to them. Whatever the case, a Republic-controlled planet probably wouldn't be a safe place to be, for either of them. The woman continued speaking.

"At this point, it doesn't matter anyway. Now we're stuck here."

"What?"

"I didn't run the pre-flight checks. On top of that, we got hit before we made it to hyperspace. I'm not sure what happened exactly… It's amazing the ship made it to its destination without dropping out of hyperspace, but the hyperdrive won't work anymore… It's fried. It was my boss' 3 million credit, class 2 hyperdrive engine, and it's completely fried."

Kyrr then realized why traveling from the center of the galaxy to the outer-rim had taken so little time; a class 2 hyperdrive was probably the fastest he'd ever heard of.

"So now the only option is to land on Tatooine?" he asked.

"Yeah. I'm going to need a new ship, if you still aren't planning on killing me. Either way, this ship won't get anywhere in a hundred years using only sublight engines. And it can be too easily identified by the transponder code anyway… I have to get rid of it. I only hope my boss doesn't figure out that I trashed one of his best ships, and that I lost most of his Ryll spice…"

"Do you have enough money for a new starship?"

"Well…No."

"What about just a new hyperdrive?"

"I have 20 creds, that's it. This job was supposed to be my source of income."

Kyrr took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. Then a new idea suddenly dawned on him.

"You could get some money for selling this ship, but then even if you bought a hyperdrive it would be useless without a new ship to put it in. I'm flat out broke at the moment, and I'm going to need a new ride, too. So I say you sell not only this ship, but the Ryll spice you have left in the cargo hold. Selling it would very likely get you noticed by your boss if word gets around… and that's where I come in. I'll agree to protect you from any of your boss's potential hit-men, in return for part of the money you make selling the spice. And also passage on the ship you buy... I've realized that there's somewhere else I need to go."

The woman hesitated for a second, thinking about Kyrr's offer.

"Why do you need _me_ to sell the Ryll spice?" she asked.

"You'd know who to sell it to, to make the most money. I'm sure you know your way around Tatooine better than me."

"Yeah, I suppose I do... I have a few people in mind who might be interested," she said thoughtfully. "Well… it's a deal then. Not that I could refuse if I wanted to… So you're going to be my bodyguard now? What did you do before?"

"I was a bounty hunter. Not so much recently, though. And just to be polite, my name's Kyrr Geron."

The tan sphere of Tatooine was much closer than before. Soon the ship would be in the outermost layer of its atmosphere. The woman made the necessary adjustments to the instrument panel, smiling weakly. "You know, this has probably been the craziest day of my entire life. First you show up and essentially kidnap me, even shoot at me, and now all of a sudden you want to be my bodyguard… I never did trust bounty hunters."

She looked at him directly in the eyes for the first time.

"And my name's Aleina... Aleina Kaede."


	8. Chapter 8: An Uneasy Landing

**Congratulations to any of my readers who have made it this far into the story. There'll be more of it to come soon enough...**

**Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think, and leave a review!**

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Chapter 8: An Uneasy Landing

Wispy tan clouds rushed past outside as the ship plummeted through the dusty atmosphere of Tatooine. Aleina Kaede masterfully adjusted the repulsor output to gradually slow the ship as it fell, although it still seemed to be falling fairly quickly. Both she and Kyrr were securely strapped into the harnesses attached to their seats, and Kyrr was anxiously watching Aleina's every move. He suddenly realized that he had put his helmet on again without thinking; something about the rapid landing was making him uneasy.

Aleina could easily have slowed the ship down to a hover, but Kyrr supposed that minimizing the time they spent in the air was a necessary part of being fugitives from both sides of the law. The longer it took to land, the more likely it would be that some other pilot in the area would recognize the ship's transponder code. If any of Aleina's "co-workers" were flying around, things could turn ugly later on.

_I swear, this is even closer to freefall than when my speeder ran out of fuel this morning._

Kyrr really hoped that Aleina knew what she was doing. He also hoped that the Republic hadn't put a price out on his head yet; even the bounty hunters of remote and lawless Tatooine would sometimes claim a bounty for the Republic, if the price was high enough.

The clouds were starting to thin out now, allowing some features of the distant landscape to become clearly visible. There were a few cliffs and other rock formations, but the surface of Tatooine consisted mostly of vast areas of desolate, empty sand that stretched for miles. Every now and then, Kyrr saw a ship or two flying nearby, landing or departing from the planet. It really was a busy place, despite how barren it appeared to be.

When Aleina brought the ship closer to the planet's surface, Kyrr realized that they actually _were _moving forward. He supposed they had been the entire time, but it had seemed like the ship was falling almost straight down. Aleina started to crank up the repulsor power, slowing their descent considerably. They couldn't have been more than a kilometer away from the ground below them as a conglomeration of boxy shapes appeared on the horizon. As they got closer to the shapes, Kyrr could see that they were, in fact, the tan buildings of a sprawling Tatooine city.

Almost before he knew it, they were flying right above it at a fairly low altitude. Aleina brought the ship's speed down to a slow hover, and then there was a dull _ka-klomp_ as the landing gear hit the ground.

Kyrr turned his head toward Aleina, and she looked back at him with her head tilted slightly, an inquisitive expression on her face. He suddenly remembered that he was still wearing his helmet. He unclamped his gloved hands from the underside of his seat and quickly took the helmet off again. He slowly began to mumble an explanation.

"I was just a little, umm…"

He trailed off and didn't finish the sentence.

"We're here," Aleina said.

"Yeah…"

They had landed in the empty sand dunes, a few hundred meters away from the city itself.

"Any reason why you chose to land here, exactly?" he enquired.

"I don't really want to have this ship seen in any of the docking bays in town. Not to mention, a docking bay would cost extra credits we obviously don't have right now… The city's called Mos Eirat, if that's what you're asking. I've been here a lot. I land here every time I come to Tatooine, so this is where all of the possible _customers _I know would be."

"Isn't this also where your boss is, then?"

"Yes... But if this plan is actually going to work, I can't just sell the spice blindly somewhere else on the other side of the planet. Like you said, I already know who's really in the market for this kind of stuff. It's just that I don't know many people on Tatooine outside of Mos Eirat." She paused contemplatively, and then continued. "I think we'll be fine for a little while, before we go into the city."

"I see. I just hope our being here doesn't cause any problems."

"Isn't that where _you_ come in anyway?"

"Well, I can only do so much," Kyrr replied. "We'll have to do this whole operation very quickly…" He looked absent-mindedly at one of his blasters. "Do you know how to handle a blaster?" he asked.

"I guess, sort of…" Aleina responded, sounding unsure of herself. "I haven't really had any weapons training or anything, and I don't have much experience with using one…" She paused, taking a deep breath. "I always hoped that wearing a pistol on my belt would keep me from running into trouble… Or at least keep trouble from running into _me._ I didn't think I'd actually have to use it one day."

_Fierfek, she's lucky she's still alive, in her line of work._

"Well, I suppose if you _had_ known how to use that pistol of yours, I would really have been in trouble when I ran up your cargo ramp, huh? But it's probably best that I teach you how to defend yourself properly… I mean, I have to look after my investment. You're no use to me dead."

He unstrapped one of the two blaster rifles he was carrying from his shoulder, and held it out to her. She raised her eyebrows a little, and took it from him. She turned it over in her hands, looking a little bewildered as she examined it, feeling its unfamiliar metallic heaviness.

"I don't think anyone's going to give you a hard time while you've got _that _slung across your back," Kyrr commented.

He could see that Aleina was obviously not comfortable with larger blasters. She awkwardly raised the long black rifle to look down its sights, placing the stock too high on her shoulder to shoot effectively. Kyrr also noticed that she seemed to be aiming at him, although she couldn't keep the gun steady at all.

_Shab, the recoil would break her arm with her shooting like that!_

Kyrr stood up out of his copilot's chair. He could have sworn that she was tracking him with the blaster rifle, but perhaps it was only a combination of his imagination and her unsteady aim. Whatever the case, she did not turn around when he walked up just behind her and gingerly placed his hands on her arms.

"Here, move _this_ down," he told her, adjusting the position of the rifle's stock so that it would absorb the recoil properly when fired, "and move your other hand a little farther forward… That should stabilize your aim a little."

Then Aleina did turn around, and handed the rifle back to Kyrr. "You know maybe I don't need this. I think I'll be fine with my blaster pistol."

With that, she walked off to the cargo bay to find it.


	9. Chapter 9: Trustworthy Enough

Chapter 9: Trustworthy Enough

Kyrr Geron's red-armored boot crunched as it stepped out of the ship and into the endless sands of Tatooine. Even through his helmet's tinted visor, the twin suns above the horizon almost blinded him before his eyes adjusted to the intense light. He primed the blaster rifle he was carrying.

Aleina Kaede had found her blaster in the cargo bay and returned it to its holster before going back to the cockpit. After that, she and Kyrr had agreed that it would be best to leave the ship and start setting their plan in motion as soon as possible.

Kyrr looked back as Aleina exited the ship and came to stand next to him, with one of his rifles slung across her shoulder. She had agreed that it would be wise to carry more than just her pistol, but she had been adamant that she would be able to use the rifle, if it really came down to it, with or without Kyrr's guidance. She had zipped up her black jacket to keep out the sand, and had put on a pair of black, leathery gloves. Kyrr watched as she pushed back her sleeve and pressed a red button on the thin control band strapped to her left wrist, which closed the narrow boarding ramp behind them with a hiss of air. Compared to the enormous cargo bay door, the boarding ramp made barely any sound as it clicked shut.

Kyrr turned to face Aleina. "What are we waiting around for? Let's get going," she said. She turned away and promptly walked off towards the city. Kyrr sprinted a few steps forward and caught up to her.

There was a strong wind that occasionally kicked sand into the air around them, and Kyrr was grateful to be wearing his helmet when he heard sand rasping and hissing against the outside of it. Aleina was struggling as the wind picked up; her eyes were almost squinted shut, and she was using her right hand to cover her face with her jacket collar in an attempt to protect her face from the sand. Kyrr sped up, walking into the wind, and positioned himself in front of her. She stayed close behind him.

The cloudless sky was a dusty blue, and through the low-lying haze of airborne sand, Kyrr could see Mos Eirat about a hundred yards away, shimmering in the waves of heat radiating off the desert. The architecture of the tan-ish plaster buildings was the standard combination of blocky shapes with domed roofs, and there was a dense throng of people walking the streets belonging to numerous races, including a scantily-clad Twi'lek female who momentarily caught Kyrr's eye before disappearing around a corner.

And it was hot. Incredibly, _swelteringly_ hot. After only a few minutes, Kyrr could already feel the plates of his _beskar_ heating up in the suns. _Should get a coolant system installed in this thing, _he thought.

Kyrr was grateful when they finally entered the city, where the shadows cast by the buildings offered some refuge from the intense heat, and also blocked some of the wind. Aleina removed her hand from her collar and spoke to Kyrr for the first time in what had seemed like hours.

"There's a cantina in this section of Mos Eirat," she said quietly, very close to Kyrr. She kept her eyes straight ahead, but had leaned over toward him, speaking into where his ear would be, if he hadn't been wearing a helmet. "There are some dealers there we… _I_ could talk to. But I'm not really sure about this... I don't want to rush blindly into a deal right away, necessarily…" Her eyes shifted, and would move with the crowd of street-walkers for a moment, and then instantaneously change directions to follow somebody else.

Kyrr turned his head slightly toward her. "Come on, Kaede, a little while ago you were eager to get on with things. We can't slow down…Unless you have something else you'd like to say."

"I'm not saying we should slow down…" She had gotten closer to Kyrr, still looking nervously around. "I'm just -"

She stopped talking. She had accidentally brushed Kyrr's arm while absent-mindedly running her hand through her hair.

_Afraid?_

She took a small step away from Kyrr, and swiveled her head to speak directly to him. She saw two immense, bright yellow orbs, reflected in the dark, slitted void of Kyrr's helmet. "It's nothing. You're right, we do need to keep going."

The city of Mos Eirat turned out to be much bigger than Kyrr had assumed it was when he had seen it from the air. _It must stretch for hundreds of miles!_ he thought, as he followed Aleina through sidestreets and back alleys in the hot and humid atmosphere, their footsteps creating a quiet, dry, swishing rhythm in the sand. They mixed with thronging crowds consisting of members of countless alien races, some of which Kyrr had never even seen before. He thought he had encountered every sentient species the galaxy had to offer on culturally-diverse Coruscant, but the people he passed in the streets of Mos Eirat continuously proved that assumption wrong; he couldn't identify quite a few of the beings he saw.

He had heard of Jawas, however, and recognized them by their descriptions: they were generally about half as tall as a normal humanoid, robed in rough, brown fabric, with yellow eyes that shone out of the unnaturally dark emptiness under their hoods, where everyone assumed their faces must be. Kyrr once knew a man back on Coruscant, who had complained about the Jawas he had encountered on his last "business" trip to Tatooine. The man had just gotten back, and was chatting over drinks with his friends on a balcony in the Traviss Entertainment District. "I hate those little cretins," he had said, momentarily pausing as he raised his glass to his lips. "They smell terrible if you get too close, and they always drive a hard bargain." Kyrr had waited for him to put the glass back down on the table, before he had pulled the trigger from a higher balcony almost 500 meters away. Kyrr supposed long-range listening devices had their uses.

During their long walk, Kyrr saw a Jawa conversing with a green-skinned Twi'Lek man. As Kyrr approached, the Twi'Lek muttered something in what sounded like the Bocce language, to which the Jawa responded with a loud and high-pitched cry of "Nyeta! Gad'wa toineepa!" Kyrr didn't know enough Jawaese to understand what it meant, but the Jawa was very animated, waving his short arms in the air and gesturing energetically, and was obviously not satisfied with whatever it was the Twi'Lek had said. As Kyrr walked by, he could see that the soft-spoken Twi'Lek man looked taken aback as the small creature continued to shout at him so rapidly that Kyrr had no hope of making out individual syllables. He decided, then and there, that he definitely did _not_ like Jawas.

Their route through the city seemed to go on and on, and Kyrr was beginning to wonder if perhaps Aleina had gotten lost, and was just too stubborn or afraid to tell him.

Kyrr had never been to Tatooine before, and at this point he was just hoping that the buildings had indoor temp regulators. Every time their journey took them into the shade, Kyrr could feel the temperature drop by several standard degrees; stepping back into the sunlight felt like stepping out of an oven and into a blast furnace. Kyrr could see that Aleina's face had turned a more pinkish color from the heat, and every now and then he would feel a bead of sweat roll down his own cheek inside his helmet.

_That's it. As soon as this whole deal is done with, I'm buying a coolant system for this suit._

Kyrr wondered why Aleina, who had supposedly been to Mos Eirat so often, wasn't used to the heat by now. Then he realized that perhaps there _was_ no getting used to it. As he was contemplating this, Aleina stopped in her tracks. She looked back at Kyrr behind her.

"Lost?" he asked.

"I just have this bad feeling, that – no, I'm not lost."

"Good. Let's keep moving, then."

Aleina turned away hesitantly, but then kept walking. Kyrr followed her along the street and then into yet another shady alley, just another space between two beige blocks of Tatooinian architecture, seemingly the thousandth they had passed through.

They had barely set foot in it, when a large human male stepped out from behind a thick, exposed, and rusty pipe leading from the ground into a wall. There was a devious look on his wrinkled, leathery, dark tan face, and in one hand he held a small, cobbled-together-looking blaster pistol. He stood there aiming the blaster at Aleina, poised to shoot. His eyes focused first on Aleina's face, then the rifle she was carrying, and finally Kyrr, who stepped forward imposingly, his own rifle raised. The expression on the man's face melted away into an apprehensive look of defeat as he took in the sight of Kyrr's blood-red Mandalorian armor, and his muscles lost their tension. His arms dropped to his sides, and he calmly and casually walked past Kyrr and out of the alley. Kyrr watched as the would-be attacker turned the corner, and was gone from sight.

_Well, that was… odd, to say the least._

"Friend of yours?" Kyrr asked Aleina.

"Definitely not," Aleina replied. "But I feel like I've seen his face before… Did I mention I had a bad feeling about this?"

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, exactly. I think I just saved your skin, though. Seems like this plan is working out pretty well so far, huh?"

"Yeah, I suppose it is…"

"By the way… Are you _sure_ you're not lost?"

"I already told you, I know where I'm going! Can't you trust me?"

"No."

Aleina didn't respond right away. She looked somewhat distant, for a moment. "Right," she said quietly, eyes downcast. She looked up again. "Of course not. The cantina should be up ahead, along this next street on the left."

With that, she turned around and continued walking.

_She seems trustworthy enough, _Kyrr thought as he followed close behind.

* * *

**After a long hiatus, I have started to work on Kyrr Geron again. It's hard to believe that it has been almost two years since I began this story, and I would like to believe that my writing has improved somewhat in that time. **

**Thank you for taking the time to read this far into Kyrr Geron. If you want to see more chapters, be sure to say so in a review!**


	10. Chapter 10: Scum and Villainy

Chapter 10: Scum and Villainy

"Well, here it is," Aleina said quietly.

The rusted and weathered brown metallic door slid back into the rough, beige plaster wall of the unassuming building, hissing and scraping into place. Kyrr Geron and Aleina Kaede stepped out of the almost blinding light of Tatooine's twin suns, and down into the dimly-lit interior of Mos Eirat's premiere watering hole for its multicultural inhabitants. On the way in, they passed a severe-looking member of the Zabrak species, with light brown skin and numerous small horns protruding from the top of his hairless cranium, who seemed to be waiting impatiently for someone just outside the cantina.

Kyrr and Aleina stopped just inside the doorway, standing where they were for a moment as they took in their new surroundings. Kyrr shouldered the rifle he had been carrying in his hands, and now that they were out of the wind, Aleina unzipped her jacket again. They stood in a square shaft of sunlight for a brief moment before the door closed noisily behind them, enveloping them in the cantina's dark atmosphere.

The setting was all too familiar to Kyrr. With the barren desert landscape outside out of sight, the rundown drinking establishment was no different from the countless bars he had frequented over the years in the urban sprawl of Coruscant. Looking around, Kyrr could see its denizens were as varied and diverse as those of underlevel bars. He almost felt at home. Almost.

_Even by Coruscant underlevel standards, this place is pretty bad... At least it's a little cooler in here._

This cantina seemed… _darker_. There was an even greater volume of smoke filling the air than what Kyrr was used to. The place lacked the polished, industrial charm of Coruscanti interior design; underlevel nightclubs and bars usually had a few colorful light fixtures, even if they were more decorative than illuminative. Here, there were only a handful of weak lights that cast a faint yellowish glow on their surroundings, making the cantina seem dirtier and more faded than it was.

A Rodian wearing a brown jacket passed by in front of Kyrr, reminding him of the life he had taken in a similar bar only a day before. This one, unlike his deceased Coruscanti counterpart, wasn't laughing. The immense dark orbs of the Rodian's eyes were featureless, so it was impossible to tell in which direction they were looking. Kyrr judged by the slight angling of his head, however, that he had glanced subtly at Kyrr in passing. _I suppose a Mandalorian is bound to draw attention, _Kyrr thought_, even on a backwater planet like this one._

"So, this is where your contacts are supposed to be?" Kyrr asked in low tones.

Aleina seemed to be slowly scanning for them among the cantina's numerous occupants. "I… I think so. This is where they usually make their deals. If they're doing any business today, they'll be here."

"Well, we probably shouldn't stand around much longer, we don't want to attract too much attention to ourselves. I'm going to get myself a drink. I suggest you stay close by."

Aleina shifted her focus to the horizontal slit in Kyrr's helmet. "Alright. Maybe I can ask the bartender about the dealers we're looking for."

Kyrr and Aleina began to make their way toward the bar, a rectangular counter which seemed to be in the center of the place. A straight path to the bar was impossible, and they had to weave between many crowded, circular tables, overhearing conversations in a thousand languages and dialects. The faint clatter of drinking vessels accented the din of countless murmuring voices as Kyrr walked slowly and casually onward, Aleina just behind him.

Kyrr noticed a very pale-skinned man with a scarred and disfigured face seated at one table, who was conversing with a wrinkled, dark green Weequay. The pale-skinned man stopped short in the middle of a sentence in a language Kyrr could not understand, and put his drink down on the table as Kyrr was passing by, staring at him warily.

_So much for subtlety._

Kyrr and Aleina finally made it to the bar area, after what had seemed like a mile-long journey from the cantina's entrance. There were two open seats in front of them, and Kyrr chose the seat on the right.

The bar stool creaked in protest as Kyrr sat down upon it. It was upholstered with cheap bantha-hide leather. Kyrr had never seen a living bantha before; the gigantic, furry creatures, sometimes used as beasts of burden by the primitive Sand People on the planet, were native to Tatooine. But he recognized the material easily, as it was commonplace among lowlifes in the underlevels who sometimes wore bantha-hide vests or boots.

Kyrr estimated that each side of the rectangular bar could accommodate at least fifteen or twenty bar-goers. He noticed there were several scratched and dented, boxy distillation machines whirring a few feet behind the smooth, brown counter. It seemed that all its roughness had been worn away by countless years of use.

As soon as Kyrr took his seat, the Gran sitting to his immediate right momentarily focused his three eyes on Kyrr, before promptly standing up and walking away. Several other beings who had been sitting at the bar also got up and left, some leaving their drinks behind. Aleina sat down cautiously next to Kyrr as the bartender turned around.

The blue-skinned Duros was cleaning a dingy-looking glass with an equally dingy-looking scrap of fabric. He removed the rag from the glass, squinting at a particularly dirty spot on its surface, and then spat forcefully into it. He wiped the rag around inside it once more, and set it down on the counter in front of Kyrr. The spot had become a translucent smear. Aleina tried not to look disgusted.

"What do you want?" the bartender asked in accented Galactic Basic.

"Arala," Kyrr replied.

"Don't serve that here."

"Ardees, then."

"One Jawa Juice, comin' up," the Duros said, referring to the drink by its nickname. He reached under the counter and brought out a pitcher of the stuff, and filled up the glass already in front of Kyrr.

Kyrr stared down at the drink and swirled it around pensively. The smear on the inside of the glass was now gone.

"What will it be for the _pretty lady_?" the Duros sneered, turning to a half-horrified Aleina Kaede.

"The same thing he's having," she answered quickly.

Kyrr leaned in menacingly toward the barkeep. "Watch yourself. She's mine."

The Duros leaned in as well, pointing a long, blue finger at Kyrr. "You Mandos always make a mess. But I'm not afraid of you. The last Mandos that came in here were… _made to leave_."

_There were other Mandalorians here?_

"Easy now," Kyrr said, straightening up, "there's no need for… hostilities."

"E chu ta!" the Duros spat, lapsing into Huttese as he went through the motions of cleaning another dirty glass. He proceeded to fill it with Jawa Juice, and slammed it down on the bar for Aleina to drink. She eyed it suspiciously, as if it might have been a particularly dangerous and diminutive venomous beast. The bartender turned away and began to wipe the bar with the same filthy rag, moving his arm in an angry circular motion.

Aleina wasn't terribly eager to take a sip of her beverage. "I need some information," she stated matter-of-factly.

The Duros looked up from his work, leaning on the counter. "What information?"

Kyrr removed his helmet, regretting doing so almost immediately as an indescribably rank scent exploded into his olfactory senses; this cantina was even mustier than any he had been to back on Coruscant. He took a small sip of his Jawa Juice, and found it to be as likeable as the species after which it was named. He put the drink down, keeping his helmet tucked under his left arm out of habit, and continued to listen to the conversation.

"I'm looking for Jorel Kopos. Is he here?" Aleina asked.

"Never heard of him," the bartender replied, returning to cleaning the counter.

"I need to talk to him about a deal," Aleina said after a momentary silence, "a _spice_ deal."

The Duros again stopped his cleaning, sighing loudly. "Why the Mando, then?"

"To make sure the deal goes smoothly. You can never be too careful."

The Duros's red eyes locked onto Aleina's for a moment, searching for something in them which he evidently did not find. He sighed again, and then spoke. "He's in the back, like always."

Kyrr casually took another swig of his Jawa Juice. He could tell that it wasn't potent enough to affect him, if he didn't finish it, and it tasted watered down anyway. With the attention that seemed to come with wearing _beskar'gam_, Kyrr didn't want to run the risk of being seen ordering a drink and not drinking it; if he showed any signs of weakness, he wouldn't be as good a deterrent to anyone who might otherwise jeopardize the success of his little operation. After swallowing a small amount of the questionably sanitary fluid, he put his grey and crimson helmet back on and stood up.

"Thank you," Aleina said to the bartender.

He gestured to the drinks he had served Kyrr and Aleina. "Sixteen credits."

Kyrr came to stand directly behind Aleina as she withdrew a credit chip, her last 20 credits, from a pocket inside her jacket. She slid it across the counter to the Duros. "A little extra for your help," she said, also getting up from her seat, leaving her drink untouched.

The bartender grunted as he immediately swiped the credit chip off the bar, jamming it into his pocket without so much as glancing at it first. He returned nonchalantly to his efforts with the rag.

_Great, _Kyrr thought._ Now there won't be a _shabla _cred between us until we sell the Ryll spice. At least this place accepts Republic credits._

Kyrr and Aleina took a few steps away from the bar, and spoke in hushed voices. "So our man's here, then?" Kyrr asked.

"Yes, as long as the bartender was telling the truth," Aleina told him. "I think there's a more exclusive section of this cantina further in. Kopos should be there."

Kyrr found that reply to be somewhat worrisome. "You don't sound entirely certain. If you've been here before, why didn't you already know that's where he usually is?"

Aleina answered somewhat hesitantly. "Well, I haven't exactly done _this_ before. I've never talked to the dealers directly, I was just a courier for my boss."

Kyrr took a deep breath. _How is she going to pull this off if she's never made a spice deal before?_

He had never been involved with the drug trade, but he had spent enough time in the underlevels to know that a deal could go very wrong, very fast. With illegal mind-altering substances being so valuable, armed protection was usually required to ensure they didn't change hands without the proper payment. In many cases, the guards who protected the drugs were also customers themselves, or got a small free supply from their employers as part of their wages. Throwing any sort of argument into the volatile environment of drug-abusing, gun-toting criminals, even a minor disagreement over pricing, could be like throwing a thermal det into a fuel depot. A negotiator in the business needed to talk tough, but do it softly.

"But I know what I'm doing," Aleina reassured him. "I have a lot of… second-hand experience. Besides, we have an advantage, since we're not trying to make a profit. I can sell at a price so low, no spice dealer on Tatooine would be able to resist. They love a good bargain, from what I hear."

"I hope you're right. And I hope it'll be enough to get us off this rock."

They were silent for a moment. Then Aleina spoke again. "Kopos should be this way," she said, as she began to walk in the opposite direction of the cantina's entrance.

The two picked their way among the tables until they had gotten to the edge of the establishment, where there was a clearer path. They continued along the beige wall, getting closer to the back of the place. At one point, they passed a faded stain on the plaster that looked to Kyrr to have been blood at one point.

Eventually, Kyrr and Aleina came to an area where there weren't as many tables and chairs, and even fewer light fixtures. Here, the murmur of the crowd was barely audible, and the lights of the bar could no longer be seen through the dense smoke. In the dark, close to the back wall, Kyrr could see a single, shadowy figure seated at the only occupied table. As they approached the figure, Kyrr noticed a second standing right next to it. This second figure had green skin, dark and featureless eyes, and was wearing a brown jacket; it was the Rodian that had passed Kyrr earlier.


End file.
